From Nowhere: Artists, Writers, and the Precognitive Imagination

Creativity Is Time Travel. Literally. Artists and writers very often predict future events in their work. Skeptics dismiss these anomalies, but what if they hold the key to the creative imagination? In this mind-bending book, the 40,000-year history of art is reconsidered as a literally prophetic enterprise. From Ice Age cave paintings to the novels of Virginia Woolf and Philip K. Dick, the films of Werner Herzog and David Lynch, and even the songs of The Beatles, Wargo makes a case for the inherently time-defying nature of inspiration. Creators often channel their own futures—and the future of their culture—in their art. It is an entirely new way of thinking about one of humanity’s oldest questions: Where do new ideas come from? “There are books, and then there are books. The latter change one’s life, change how one thinks of pretty much everything. From Nowhere is such a book ... that turns one around to think anew, to be inspired from the future as well as by the past. I have been turned around, temporally and existentially, by Eric Wargo.” —Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of How to Think Impossibly “Eric Wargo’s work is not only on the cultural cutting edge, his pen is the knife that is cutting the edge. From Nowhere is impossible to put down. ... After speaking with and interviewing many creative scientists and artists, I believe that Wargo’s explanation is not only accurate, but game changing. He’s right. If this framework was taught in schools of art (and science!), the consequences would be transformative.” —D. W. Pasulka, author of Encounters